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Dozens of Palestinians have been killed in a series of Israeli air strikes in southern Gaza on Saturday which officials said were aimed at Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif.
Israeli officials said Deif and another senior Hamas commander Rafa’a Salameh were the targets of the attack. By nightfall there was still no confirmation from Israel that the two had been killed.
“We are still checking and verifying the results of the strike,” said one senior Israeli military official, adding that there “was very accurate intelligence that verified” the two had been at the site of the above-ground attack.
Benjamin Netanyahu said in a televised press conference on Saturday evening, his first in more than three months, that Deif’s “hands are covered in the blood of many Israelis”.
“The Middle East and the entire world will be better if this mass murderer is gone,” the Israeli prime minister added.
Health authorities in the Hamas-controlled enclave said that more than 90 people had been killed and some 300 injured. Several emergency workers were among the dead, they said, warning that local hospitals were unable to cope with the influx of wounded.
Israeli officials said Deif and Salameh had been in a fenced-in and relatively isolated “operational compound” of small buildings and sheds in the western outskirts of Khan Younis, bordering what Israel has designated the Al-Mawasi humanitarian “safe zone”.
Other Hamas operatives are believed to have been present as well, probably to guard the two senior leaders, the official added.
In recent weeks Israel had expanded the so-called “safe zone” to include parts of Khan Younis; it was not clear on Saturday whether it included the site of the alleged Hamas compound.
“If Hamas thinks they can build a compound in this area and we won’t strike it . . . they’re wrong,” said the Israeli military official.
According to a local Palestinian civil defence spokesperson, the air strikes targeted both a cluster of tents filled with displaced people and a separate house located some distance away.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have taken shelter in the Al-Mawasi area on the Mediterranean coast, on the orders of the Israeli military.
Videos from the scene showed giant plumes of smoke rising into the air and at least one massive crater, as medical personnel and civilians attempted to evacuate the injured.
Hamas in a statement strongly denied that Deif had been killed, calling it a “lie” and “false claims” aimed to “cover up for the scale of the horrific massacre”.
“We went to the location and saw children, women and men torn to pieces. The tents caught fire and burnt. They used such powerful bombs that bodies were buried underground,” said Mahmoud Basal, the civil defence spokesperson.
The Israeli officials “estimated” that most of the reported casualties “were also terrorists who were with Deif and Salameh”. Israel is “currently unaware” of any of its own hostages being held by Hamas in the area, they added.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that the Israeli prime minister had “given a standing directive to eliminate the Hamas leadership” at the start of the war. The office added that Netanyahu would convene his security chiefs and diplomatic advisers for updates later in the day.
If confirmed, Deif — the leader of Hamas’s military wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades — would be the most senior of the group’s officials to be killed so far in the war, which is now in its tenth month.
Two Hamas brigade commanders were killed in the conflict’s earlier stages, and Deif’s longtime deputy Marwan Issa was killed in an Israeli air strike in central Gaza in March.
Deif is thought to have masterminded the group’s October 7 attack which sparked the war, and has been Israel’s top target along with Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar. Sinwar remains at large.
Deif, whose nom de guerre means “guest” in reference to his ability to evade Israeli forces for years, successfully survived multiple previous assassination attempts dating back over two decades.
For years he was believed by Israeli intelligence to be partially paralysed in a wheelchair, with a missing arm and leg. Yet in January Israel released previously unpublished images of Deif taken inside Gaza, showing him physically intact.
Netanyahu, in his press conference, vowed to continue the campaign in Gaza “until all of our goals are achieved . . . this is ‘total victory.’”
“We’re getting close to victory. We’re getting close to trampling them [the Hamas].”
Additional reporting by Heba Saleh in Cairo
